Just Food

Driving in the usual way it's five miles through the State Forest, then five miles on Route 125, then seven miles along the river into town. The long way around it's seven miles through the forest then 17 miles along the river. Both routes share the last seven miles, but otherwise they're different in terms of specific environment. The plants are a lot different. I wanted some cattail shoots, so I went the usual way, out past the lake. In the make-over of park services they've allowed access to a new area, a small cove, and it's thick in cattails. It takes about ten minutes to harvest a batch. These are very good, peeled and steamed, with pesto mayonnaise; and I'd bought a bag of mixed baby greens, which I wilted with hot butter and mushrooms. Wilted salads were a big thing, when I was a kid, fried salt-pork and cornbread. I still love it, though my mother would never have considered morels. As a family we did harvest wild blackberries and wild plums, to make jams and jellies, ate fresh fish twice a week, and had access to the great military commissaries at very low cost, milk and butter and cheese. I never knew we were poor, Upper Lower Class, until I was in college. Even then, the wealthier kids, mostly from the Northeast (going to college in Florida) vied to be asked to dinner at my parents' house. There was usually a weekend fish-fry, shared effort, Dad fried the fish, Carlene made the hush puppies, somebody made slaw, Mom made cornbread sticks, essentially an all-you-can-eat buffet for free. First-time Yankee students usually ate until they vomited. At the same time, I had never eaten a mushroom and never seen an artichoke. It just struck me, the name for tiny ice crystals that fall out of an often clear sky is spiculae, I'd lost that word, so I write it on a slip of paper and pin it to the wall. There are dozens of slips of paper, with words or quotes pinned to my walls, they're part of my memory process. Like some radio shows, this time of year, talking about proms. I went to mine, with Sandra Harper (as I remember), but it wasn't anything special, a night in a rented suit. In my mind, I was already out of there, having accepted a job in summer-stock theater for that summer, which changed my life completely. New England, gay people (who ran theater before AIDS), good and interesting food, and a general intelligence that reached beyond mere survival. A whole new world. That I could do this still mystifies me. I would say that nothing prepared me, but something must have. Now, fifty years later, I'm collecting rain water in a bucket to wash my dishes, reading by candlelight, and drinking moonshine. Talk about success. But maybe it is the measure, what you can do without. It's at least a measure by which the rest can be judged. I love the tension drawn by a line in the sand, not that it means anything, it's, after all, a line in the sand, ephemeral at best. After the hour spent on commas in that last sentence, I spent all of my effort building a small mousetrap from small sticks and string. It didn't work, but it was a fun project. I spent an entire evening gluing sticks together, forgetting the basic tenet of 'outward force', a trapped mouse, like a trapped pig, is always going to push against the fence, so the rails need to be on the inside of the posts. Joel thought it was stupid I'd read Thoreau's journal, which it would be, but I read a lot, so I can spare the time. Read more...

Crossing Shots

Rodney called and I tried to tell him that I didn't need a buddy. A difficult but interesting conversation because he was drunk and deep into his personal hell. I hate this shit, but it is interesting. I'm fine with myself, I know the chinks and voids, and I try to never offer advice. Usually I mumble, little more than nothing, a smear of butter, a hint of exotic marmalade. But the endless cascade of hard times wears on me. It bores me, actually, I'd rather be pilloried, drawn and quartered, whatever. D had already called, so I felt like a phone junkie. Never could get back into my groove. Had a drink and listened to Bach, turned off the lights and sat in the dark, got into a non-thinking mode. The light rain helped. More light rain in the morning, enough to prelude a trip to town, the weather sounds better for tomorrow. I'd started smelling something dead, but I can't find whatever it is. Probably dead mice in the walls. The smell always goes away after a few days, but I have to look under everything, under the house, behind piles of books, because you're not supposed to have rotting animals in your house. They mummify, actually, with that death mask on their face, and even a small mouse can look quite vicious. I had to laugh, I was completely disheveled, in my bathrobe and slippers, I'd started the espresso maker, and I went outside to collect enough morels for an omelet. I'd seen a few, breaking ground behind the shed, coming in yesterday; but the very idea that I could go out in my bathrobe and slippers and get morels for breakfast seemed like a big deal. It wasn't a big deal, it was merely a matter of putting things together, morels, omelet, coffee, hungry. In our film Basho is a bum, wearing layers of clothes, puts on the coffee, walks a hundred feet from his back door, in his fucking bathrobe and slippers, and harvests morels for breakfast, he doesn't say a word, the soundtrack is the usual subdued TR, a duck egg we had watched Basho/Bum steal from a nest becomes this fragrant omelet that steams in front of us. Two takes right away, one is that he's a total fake, the other is that he might be the real thing. Trip to town, low on supplies, skipped the library because I'm expecting Thoreau's Journals; at the pub the main cooler, with six of the taps (including the Guinness) was being repaired, so Cory gave me a bottled beer. The books were in, and cheaper than expected, $50 for the two-volume Dover reprint of the 14 volume original, printed four pages to a page, 2,000,000 words. I'm in deep clover for the next year. Way oversized, heavy hard bound books, I'll have to read them leaned from lap to desk, which digs into my thighs and makes my feet fall asleep, so I have to get up fairly often, stretch, take a walk, eat something. This works well for me, a trip to the woodshed, sweeping snow off the back porch, getting a drink, rolling a smoke, then reading for another couple of hours. As a sidebar I was cooking red-beans and rice, the entire concept of red-beans and rice has changed so much in the last twenty years. These 'red-beans' might actually be crowder peas, and then the rice. I think the best rice in the world is being grown in Louisiana right now, and I fully embrace it; the red-beans I'm still tracking dow. Read more...

Slow Rain

A train in Kentucky, coal for the power plants. Strange to hear it, but the conditions are exactly correct, so when I get up to pee what I hear is dripping rain on the roof, some frogs and bugs, and a train. The darkness was absolute, and I had to feel over to where I kept my headlamp. I didn't want the light, but I didn't want to stumble and fall. I'd already knocked over a pile of books tonight, which happens when you just pile books up. Forces my hand, and I'll put away some books later, sorting them by size and color. This is a stupid system I started using decades ago where I'd remember that something I wanted to reread was in a small yellow book. The system actually works, some of the time, which is about as well as to be expected. B has his library arranged alphabetically, which is so logical it leaves me speechless, my system of size and color pales. Through a scrim softly, back light, vague shadows, does one thing matter more than another? No. That classic butterfly in Mexico, a myth, is real enough; or dancing with the little people. What becomes iconic is simply fulfilling a function, a small gasp of disbelief, then you realize Donald Trump is actually running for president. I have to retreat to my redoubt and reconsider. Later, after a night of rain, fog is so thick I can't see across the hollow. Not a breath of wind, and the green is truly beautiful, washed clean and in hundreds of shades. Sitting on the back porch, with a cup of coffee, I feel detached from the politic of the world. I notice a lovely soft green plant in the cleared area, walk over there and see that it's Black Cohosh, a folk medicine for 'woman problems', plentiful enough that Dave says it isn't worth digging. He supplements his income by digging roots. It's interesting to note that many people on the creek dig roots, most everyone carries a trowel in the fall, one friend carries his in a holster. Brought up on westerns in the early days of TV, I've always loved the idea of a holster, wore a Buck knife for several decades, now I carry a Gerber knife that clips on the inside of my jean's pocket, and a Leatherman tool, with which, given the right soundtrack, I could build a new world. I'm granted a bit of hyperbole because I have a lot of morels right now, and I'm inordinately proud of that. I have morels and you don't. Clearly something is signified. All it means is that I spent some time in the woods, but when it appears on my table, a thick and smooth mushroom gravy, it seems to acquire meaning. Another title for my memoirs might be Butter And Bacon Fat, which would be not far from the mark. I need butter as I'm down to a single stick. Olive oil is fine, it brings out the fruit (apricots) but animal fat brings out the woodsy, smokey flavors, and that's what I like best about wild mushrooms. Mostly I just indulge myself. Ryan and Lindsey worked on the driveway, digging out the grader ditch, and they dug in all the right places, which is both pleasing and interesting to me. Pleasing, because I don't have to do it; and interesting because they dig in the correct places. Drainage, if you study it, makes a certain sense. And their timing is spot on: when the trees start leafing they absorb huge quantities of water, so there isn't the same danger of damage. Late winter, early spring, is when the driveway is most vulnerable. For six or seven months I should be able to get to town whenever I wish. D calls and wants to come out with a load of white oak stumps in exchange for dinner and conversation. I can't believe my good fortune. A load of white oak now, with what I pick up during the summer, will see me through another winter. I still have some wood left from last year, and Ryan said he'd come over and split what I needed. A deed of trust.

Nothing prepares you
for the still night, and the smell
of fragrant flowers
Read more...

Too Good

Spoiled. Found another nice patch of morels and made a soup that's more like a stew. Butter, minced onion and mushrooms, a can of chicken broth, with cream added at the end and pulled off the heat. Now that I'm into the swing of it I read about sea-battles, then a couple of interesting pieces on ship-building. I was working on a paragraph, though it's fair to say that I'm always working on a paragraph, and I had completely lost track of time, when Samara called from Denver. A good call, talked about gardening and cooking, and she now wants to visit during morel season. I could leave her my map. Which could be useful. They seem to prefer certain areas, burned hardwood, wild fruit trees, canopied oak, but there's very little pattern I can distinguish, mostly I just walk around carefully, and try and stay one step ahead of the turkeys. I know I'm riding a wave here, the bounty of an exotic, but it's very real, I'm actually drying morels because I can't eat them all fresh. Granted, I'm spending all my time doing this, but what better to do? I got a little turned around today, sat on a stump and enjoyed the illusion of being lost. I was specifically lost, but in general I knew where I was. West and south of the house there are many square miles of unbroken forest, but I know most of the drainages, so I can usually find myself fairly quickly. It starts clouding up again, mid-afternoon, so I walked north until I could sense Upper Twin Creek Road, which hereabouts is called Rocky Fork, then cut back east. I intersect my property down slope, where are three natural terraces that step to the road. They actually look man-made, but I assume settled sandstone dikes. The second was revealed to me as a morel spot some years ago by a hunter (I'd caught a dog of his, and held it), and I found some there, including two large enough to stuff. I'm harvesting them early this year, because of the turkey problem. I'm planning a meatloaf with a thick mushroom gravy. The large ones I'll stuff with cream cheese and minced onion, served on a bed on enchilada/tomato sauce. I realize I'm slightly obsessed, but I'm not a threat. The first little shower came through and perched a perfect crystal on top of every leaf. It's incredibly beautiful for three or four minutes, then it's gone. In a stand of Mountain Laurel today, and the dark green was intense, like with Holly, the leaves are constructed to retain moisture, and they feel plastic. I keep finding myself at the bottom of the hill, no matter how often I swear not another climb. And it isn't too bad because I'm not in a hurry. I'm thinking about a paper, Some Median Plants, that would address the number of miniature plants that grew in a stressed environment. Deep vested thunder, but it's to the SW and that's not my weather side. Still, I'd better go, it's extending all around. Read more...

Musing Aloud

Leftovers On Toast is the working title for a memoir I seem to be writing. Twenty years ago I wrote a small book of poems using a tape recorder. I was living alone in the desert. I drove endlessly through Paradox, with all windows down and the hot air swirling like a nightmare. A small voice-activated recorder, and I'd devised a cradle for it on the steering column. I had to talk loudly, because of the wind noise, and there's a deeply desperate quality to the sound. I was remembering a particular event, a clam bake on Cape Cod, on a private beach, an assemblage of theater folk, and had the thought that I could more easily record those 3 AM moments of apparent lucidity than keyboard them, because I'm such a terrible typist. But then I remembered how dreary transcription actually was. Still I might try it, just to hear the rhythms. I was working recently, that 3 AM shift, not knowing if I was beginning or ending something, and I enjoyed reading a paragraph out loud. I changed a few small things, because they missed the beat. Hearing the voice is so critical. There's a moment, reading a poet (manifest in hearing one), that you actually hear the voice. From then on, the reading is easier; prose, of course, also, Proust, Faulkner, McCarthy. When I can hear a voice, I'm transported out of myself. The leftover mushroom dish was fantastic for breakfast, morels and cheese on toast, with a fried egg on top. I would only ever feed this to someone who was going to die anyway. I'm running low on butter and I just bought some. A great day in the woods. Found a dried wood-ear mushroom that would be large enough to make a soap shelf in a shower. I've done a couple of these and they're real crowd pleasers: flatten the back, hollow the top, and plaster it into place. It looks like it grew there. And I found a new patch of morels before the turkeys got to them. The down side is that I harvest them young, they'd be twice as large tomorrow, but I know those goddamn turkeys will find them. When I got back to the house there was a vehicle, a late model small 4-wheel drive pick-up, and an older couple looking for the graveyard. They were polite, as you might expect, when I emerged from the woods. I looked a bit frightening, but they held their ground. Rufus (I swear to god) and Betty Blevins, looking to see where some distant kin was buried. I asked them in and fixed tea. They were somewhat intimidated by my house and the ten thousand books, but we had a nice cup of tea, then I donned leather gloves, picked up some clippers, and took them out to the cemetery. They actually knew who a few of the people were, distant great-uncles, and at one point Betty said, pointing to an infant grave, that it was her great-grandmother's sister. Walking out, Rufus said he thought it was strange that I'd own the family plot, talked to me about the church that used to be down on the Rocky Fork side. Corn, he said, in all the bottoms; it was, he said, a corn economy. I was happy to be shed of them but it was an interesting diversion. I'd been thinking about waves all day, now that I could see the wind stirring tender young leaves, the invisible made visible; oh, right, the wind, now I see it. The news of the day, another hundred thousand seeking asylum, 500 dead in a capsized barge, a bomb going off somewhere; and it is clearly avoidance, that I choose hunting morels rather than considering whether Ted or Donald is the better candidate. Read more...

West African

Slack guitar, not unlike Delta Blues, a treat at 3 in the morning. A nice excuse for a wee dram and a smoke. I'd been listening to Skip James earlier, so I was primed for this African music. The lyrics sound about the same. Went back to bed, having planned several hours in the woods for later, and a book on mushroom cookery to peruse. Coffee and a couple of slices of polenta (just butter, salt and pepper, these Logan Turnpike grits don't need much, although I do usually add a few drops of pepper sauce) and I'm outside. Hunting morels is a fairly slow-motion event. I harvest maybe a pound, and when I get back to the house I make an excellent clam/mushroom chowder. I make a simple clam chowder, using canned minced clams, quite often, but the addition of sauteed morels, the butter they're cooked in, and a little cream, put this over the top. I agree with the Barnharts, that morels are maybe even better dried. The flavors are condensed, there's a smokey touch, and the mouth-feel is luscious. My specimen hickory tree, only my specimen tree because it's right outside one of my windows, is budded, and the sumac are unfurling their fronds. The last three days the oaks have started leafing and this changes the landscape. The hills and hollows are furred with green. Feeling enormously self-satisfied, I can't help myself. Eating so well, Joel joked about that, morels on toast. Reading about foraging mushrooms in the Pacific NW and some interesting recipes. One of them, for which I have all the ingredients on hand, that I intend to make tomorrow, is a gorgonzola ragout with mushrooms served on polenta. I immediately come out against cutting polenta into shapes, I just cut it into wedges, quarters usually, I don't hate having those irregular left-over bits of fried grits: with maple syrup, they are very good, but it seems so needless, to cut things into shapes. Saw TR and the Thoreau will be in on Monday, but the museum is closed, so Tuesday. The Buckeye Diary Bar and its miniature golf course were hopping, so I got a milkshake and watched for a few minutes. Avocados were two for a dollar at Kroger and I don't ever remember them being that cheap, so I bought several of the hardest and a couple of cans of crabmeat. I love avocados, stuffed with crabmeat sauteed in butter, topped with a spoonful of pesto. But, on track, I collect a few more morels, to make a pound of fresh (and I have a batch in the dehydrator), make a nice pot of pecan rice, mince a medium onion, brown it in butter, chop the morels, cook them until they release their juice, add a half cup of chicken stock, then crumble in the cheese and take it off the heat. Everything about this works, the nutty, woodsy thing, the texture, the slightly fecund cheese. I'd give this a ten. I'm a good cook and like everything else I'm good at, it took time and hard work to get there; good, only, not better than that. I cook a great many meals that might be rated highly, most of them over-rated, but that's because I'm perfectly willing to read a book and stir a pot of risotto, or take forty minutes to fry an onion. I substituted pecan rice for the polenta because I must have eaten polenta at six meals in the last three days (if you include the cheese grits) and I wanted to try this new rice. The underground rice network had highly recommended it, and a friend sent me some. Smell and taste is an interesting subject, and the aroma of this rice actually makes you remember shelling pecans so that Aunt Sadie could make those cookies, Sandies, which are, actually, gritty. As we grind down to a Trump/Clinton election, I have to say, it's interesting. The Republican VP is important, because Trump would be impeached almost immediately, and what about the Supreme Court? And money, I don't know anything about that, if you have a few hundred million, what do you do with it? First, of course, is that everyone gets a cut, that ancient sacrifice where you divide the carcass, then, I guess, you move to Switzerland, or buy an island off the coast of Scotland. Read more...

Vegetables

I fell into possession of this huge dictionary of vegetables, the history of each one and where it came from, and I lost an entire day. Who knew rutabagas could be so interesting? Aunt Sadie used to fry slices of rutabagas, or sweet potatoes, or white turnips, until the sugars converted. This is alchemy. A starch becomes a sugar and caramelizes. The word ' tomato' comes from the Aztec zitomate. A few more morels and I limit myself to an omelet, toast with pepper jam. I saute the mushrooms in butter, then make a sauce with the butter to pour on top. As my Dad often said, "we're in the tall grass", which can mean a great many things, but usually meant 'good fodder' since Dad grew up just one step above share-cropper, and fodder, for humans and animals was always a consideration. B's brother, Ronnie, made hominy this year. I don't know a single other person that makes hominy. I know one person who still makes sorghum syrup, at a loss, and I know several people who live on boats. Right now I know a great many song-writers and composers, I've always known builders and designers, always writers, wherever I happened to be, and a group of marginal people that generally seem more centered than the great mass that chose, early on, to compromise. Kim called, to verify he would be here for an extra day in early June, just before Diane will be here; two people in fourteen days, a veritable onslaught. I'm looking forward to it, hearing about the outside world; I get so involved with simple words, pate, saute, satay, that I lose track of time. Hours later I'm reading about watercress, and I remember some watercress and sweet butter sandwiches at a theater benefit, it must have been in Boston, I almost never went to these. But free food is a powerful draw, and those small triangular sandwiches were very good. Most of the food was pretty good at the meet-and-greet events, and the champagne flowed freely. Gentle rain on the metal roof draws me back to the present, where I'm grown more frail, and my body fails me, but I'm surprisingly comfortable with growing old. I'll die alone, there's little doubt of that, it could be a week or two before TR or B found me, spirit departed, carcass impregnated with fly larva, another corpse in the endless cycle of dying. Read more...

The River

The river corridor is beautiful. Two weeks ahead of the ridge in terms of Spring. Coming home yesterday I was a traffic hazard, but I pulled over at every opportunity. I took an hour to drive the 17 miles, stopping 10 times to examine bushes. The one large stand of bamboo is particularly lovely. TR called from the museum and he's ordered the 2 volume Thoreau's journals for me and I might get them on Saturday. Also, not only that he had been accepted for grad school but that today he learned he was getting a free ride. Good news, as I fear for an entire generation shackled with student debt. Debt has always bothered me. I have none, which allows me to live cheaply. Pay cash for almost everything. I had a small surplus, which is why I felt I could buy the Thoreau, and that while living on $800 a month (all inclusive, including taxes and vehicle insurance). Marilyn and I lived closer to the bone than that, for five of the years in Mississippi, until I started building barns and houses for other people. More than completely self-sufficient, a surplus, in fact, that built a house and paid for the place in Colorado. By bend of bay brings me here. No regrets, except that I wish I could have been around my daughters more when they were growing up. Napp, as they say. Morels on toast more than justify a day in the woods. Several people had mentioned a morel patch to the west of the cemetery, which involved clipping through green-briar, and it is a promising spot, I found a few and sign for many more. But also sign of turkey. I'm so pissed at them that I can hardly express my anger. I'll shoot, if I see one tomorrow, and turn it into a forcemeat. Turkey pate on toast points with olives. Green leaves fluttering, red maple and sassafras, the windows are open, the smells are fecund and sweet. Breaking Morel Rule #1, I make a second mushroom dish the same day. The rule clearly states one dish per day, the rest to be dried. Still, at the end of the season last year I was making Duxelles, which, the way I've adapted it, becomes almost a pate. Finely minced morels, finely minced sweet onion, crushed pistachio nuts, and butter, saute for ten minutes, then let it set up in the fridge for an hour. I like this on those little rye rounds, with sweet gherkins. Truly, one of the best things ever, you don't know whether to weep or just go ahead and die. I'll get back on my oyster schedule this week, and I'm looking forward to several combinations with morels. Also cream cheese and lox with Duxelles on a bagel. Best not to think too far ahead, lest I palpitate my heart. Sunday meal on a ship-of-line was always that British pudding thing, oats, with dried fruit, and pork fat, maybe a piece of gristle you could chew for a while. Read more...

Spring Text

Sassafras, and now the sumac are budding. There's a blush of color in the hollow. Cold water from the wet-weather springs is the sweetest I've ever tasted. Enough morels for a omelet, split toasted cornbread with red onion jam. The 'Fresh Eggs' signs have begun appearing, and in this flush, I'm eating a lot of them. If I supply the carton, I usually get eggs for $2 a dozen, which is often cheaper than at the store, and I eat about a dozen a week. The Order Of The Omelet. I would never wear a coat with tails, nor display awards, what did I tell Diane? That I could give up a day spent reading and writing to be with her, talk about the things we shared in common. Of course I could, look forward to, am excited about, I'm not immune to social contact. But most of it is crap. I'd rather be alone. As I understand it, The Battle Of The Nile, was about denying Napoleon North Africa. Egypt. Napoleon is like a Randy Newman song. Putin. Trump. The first Whip-O-Will, but it doesn't have its song down yet, like an orchestra tuning up. Fairly often I'd be sleeping in an aisle, having shut down my crew so the orchestra could rehearse. There are few things better than hearing the Boston Symphony Orchestra tuning up. Maybe sex with an alien, but I've never done that. But I did hear the BSO tune up twenty times. It always struck me as Eastern music. Hot day, over eighty degrees and shut down Black Dell when I went out mushrooming. More than a dozen morels, so I chop them with an onion, brown in butter, and add a can of chicken broth. Mashed potatoes make a great thickening agent. I serve this on toast, it's one of my favorite things. A good conversation with Samara in Denver, wondering about the snow there. She said the roads were dry, the plowed piles were melting, and they needed the moisture. No problem getting around; the ridge, I tell her is much the same. I need to get to town, and tomorrow is supposed to be beautiful, so my intention is to stop by the pub, buy some potato wedges on the way home, an order of fried stuffed jalapeno peppers, and hole up with some fiction. Samara calls back, to extend the conversation, but Kinsey had come over to talk about books, and that takes precedence. And she had brought a dozen farm fresh eggs. Pullet eggs, but none the less, three will get you two. My clothes are generally frayed and stained, but clean. On long sea-duties, blockades and such, fresh water was a problem for personal washing and clothes. Usually clothes were rinsed in urine, as a kind of bleach, then washed in seawater. This must have been damned uncomfortable. Pooping was not done from the poop-deck, but at the bow of the ship, the heads, which were just planks with holes in them, in a man-of-war ten each side, depending on the tack, the sailors mostly hung in the rigging and dropped their drawers to the leeward. Toilet paper was a problem. There wasn't any. And the food, my god, was awful. 500 to 800 men on a ship 200 feet by 60 for two years. Oatmeal, cooked in last night's fat, for breakfast. That fat, called slush, was saved daily, half went to the ship, for treating ropes, the other half made a 'slush-fund' for the cooks, to sell to the tallow merchants when they made land-fall. Cook fires were extinguished during battle. Rat jerky was fairly common. Scurvy was common, but by 1805 it was known that citrus could prevent that, so grog (two issues a day) was now one measure of rum, two of water, and one of lemon juice, with a taste of molasses. On shaved ice, with a sprig of mint, this is still a pretty good drink. Read more...

Plain Speak

Bit of a tousle out at the compost pile. Hissing and growling. They know me and my slingshot, so when the light goes on and I appear at the door, they slink off, two dogs and a bob-cat. Wide awake, woke Black Dell with a slap on the shoulder, stretched, washed my face, wandered over to the island for a wee dram. I can usually divine the state of the world when I roll a cigaret. Those loose pieces of tobacco, the inherent problems involved with turning a flat rectangle of paper into a cylinder, which end to put in your mouth, some things signify. A large cannon ball, a 24 pounder, with six pounds of powder in the charge, is moving rather slowly, it can be seen. You could dodge a cannon ball. Step aside and swirl your cape. It sometimes happened that the sonic blast of a close shot killed someone, without a mark on their body. More often it was fragments of a six inch ball of cast iron breaking apart, and the splinters. Guts and body parts. I have to take a break (after three days) from sea battles, blood and gore. I've been reading about Horsetails (Equisetum) because it's one of the plants planted on dikes, and I've been interested for years in the category of plants that can stand a bit of salt water, to start the reclamation process. Also, the endless salt-pans out west were interesting. Over the last couple of decades it's been a minor reading diversion. Equisetum, above all other known plants, takes gold out of soil. I knew there were plants that did this, but Horsetail seems to be the best. Sea water carries trace gold, but what I was thinking about was planting a nice stand around some mine tailings. The smelting process is simply to burn the dried stems. A few morels, budding through the duff, and tomorrow holds great promise, so I'll be in the woods most of the day. I need to get out, having been holed up for days reading naval history. Except for lunch at B's yesterday, which was delightful, AND I came home with another meal of the extraordinary chicken wings. Grilled, then doused in butter and sauce and re-grilled. They were large, twice the size you would expect, like young turkey wings, and I'd been thinking about that, where they came from. Ohio produces a lot of eggs, and these are the wings of ladies who are done with their laying. The rest of them becomes a reconstituted chicken product. A great many thighs, according to Harrison, who was probably making it up, go to Russia. After pork tenderloin, I'd have to say, I like cooking with chicken thighs best. They go so well with citrus and fruits. If I'm feeling surgical, I'll bone them and stuff them with crabmeat. Pound them out, roll them up, top with a wine and butter sauce. I served these at a cooking gig once, and to the dismay of the hostess, everyone was in the kitchen with me, eating fried chicken skin. A Cape Cod friend, so this goes back a ways, calls. She's going to be in the area in June and wants to visit, I'm right up front with the downside, no running water, no TV, the outhouse; but she eats meat, and that's rather a plus. She says she'll chance it, so we'll have to work out the logistics, which are complicated by the fact that the only bridge will probably be closed. Read more...

More Nelson

Yet another hole in my knowledge. I don't know a damned thing about the Battle of the Nile. I remember reading a book (the only history book on my parents bookshelf, which ran mostly to Perry Mason and Rex Stout) when I was quite young, about the effect of sea power on history. A second day researching Trafalgar and some of the people involved, which leads to rereading parts of some Melville (White Jacket), and other sources of information about working conditions and the actual firing of cannon. Interrupted by a scam phone call, claiming to be about an IRS issue. Interested in the scam, I play along with it. Involved me sending them a one-time payment to get the IRS off my back. I have to laugh because I've been so honest with my taxes that I actually have overpaid by losing benefits to which I was entitled. B and I were talking the other day about how not getting arrested was one of the foundational principles of our lives. At any rate, I found the phone call amusing, then called the scam-call hot line to report it. Preying on the poor is big business. The IRS might legitimately ask how I had gotten out of debt and retired, but the record will show that I was merely frugal. Today, washing some underwear and socks by hand, eating cat-tail shoots with a cream sauce on toast, listening to Bach, I was struck with the fact that I wasn't a part of the social world. Part of the ballast, in a Man-O-War, was sand, buckets of sand everywhere, gunners didn't wear shoes, and sand gave them traction against the blood running to the scuppers. A gun crew was six, usually one side would help the other. Usually a broadside was one side, but breaking the line, finally, the Brits completely took control. Collingwood, who took over command, realized early that they had won. Much of this battle was fought at extremely close quarters, and the British were better gunners. B stopped by, to ask me to lunch/dinner tomorrow afternoon, some chicken wings he needed to get out of the freezer. I agree, naturally; food and conversation with B is a special treat. I do want to talk with TR tomorrow, and if I'm going off the ridge I might as well go to town. I'd like to run out to Home Depot, a significant drive, and buy that grill. Sometimes, in the heat of battle, a ship might just loose a broadside to create more smoke. The 'powder monkeys' were kids or women. The carnage was unbelievable. I didn't go to town, reading about the rigging on a ship-of-the-line; finally do go down to B's for a feast of excellent wings, with Texas fries, and an avocado/sprout salad. A beer and a couple of hours of conversation. We both have an endless stock of stories, so one leads to another. Comfortable silences. Coming back home, the slanted light, a thousand spider-web filaments in the trees, a prismatic world. Musically it would be harmonics. Last night an hour of good blues from Jorma's Music Ranch, delta blues with that slack guitar, and I just shut down thinking, got a drink and sat back. It's difficult to describe, that sense of being totally involved in a particular music, Bach or Son House, where you lose track of everything else, anything else hanging on the next sound. Miles. I've listened to some of those recordings hundreds of times, and what you hear is what's left out, the gap, that's your problem, he seems to be saying, here are the salient notes. Which he mutes and aims upstage. Fuck you and your preconceptions, he seems to say, either you get it or you're a Republican. Read more...

Feux de Joie

Splinters. A major cause of death and serious injury in 19th century naval battles. Cannon balls ripping a ship apart. Trafalgar was the last major sea battle fought with sailing ships. Brutal. I pick the book up again as soon as it's light, reading about Nelson's death, just as the battle was ending, then a wonderful section about getting the body back home. The Brits just threw bodies overboard, jotted down the name and cleared the decks, but an admiral you pickled and took back home. Then the horrible summation, total casualties and amputations. As it happens I know quite a bit about field amputations. Years ago I was the sole recipient of Jude's Bizarre Book Of The Month club and one of the books was a guide for field amputations. Two minutes was considered decent. You give the guy opium, if you have some, or a large glass of rum, the assistants hold him down; you cut through all the meat and muscle, expose the bone, push the upper, saved, part out of the way, saw off the bone, and round it crudely with a rasp, pull back the saved parts, flap them over, stitch it shut. At some point you have to cauterize the wound. Most of the victims died anyway. Blood loss and splinters to the brain. I'd jotted down several names and terms I didn't understand, and at some point I took a cushion over to the stairwell, there are book cases on either side, and the 11th Britannica lives there. There's a staircase window, and a staircase sconce, and there's a push pin where I can post an index card with my notes. Usually, after a time, I go get a drink and roll a smoke, some times I put on a tweed jacket with leather elbow patches and smoke a pipe. You know me.

The creek is dancing
pure water cascading down
the rocky stream bed

Nelson's strategy was brilliant, break the line, take advantage of the wind, and when you broke through the line, you could rake an enemy vessel on his unprotected stern. It worked more or less perfectly. The Brits lost not a single ship and captured 19 of the French/Spanish vessels. It's easy to imagine most of the battle because there are so many first hand accounts. I also had not thought about the fact that in light airs, at close quarters, smoke would be such an important issue. Nelson lived, below decks, dying, until the battle was won. He died of a musket ball, shot from the rigging of a French ship, that went in through his shoulder, traveled through his left lung, and broke his spine. I'm completely engaged, reading this account, transported. A vivid imagination is a cheap source of entertainment. I fry a large skillet of potatoes, when I know I'm going to be involved, so I can graze; dump out a can of black olives, slice off some smoked salami, a cranberry-pecan encrusted goat cheese, some left-over cornbread. This is reading at its highest level, where the fabric of nature is breeched. What I mean is where you completely lose track of yourself and you are that guy, ramming home the charge. Some of these ships had three decks of guns, 112 gun crews, with marines and the guys that ran the ship, 800 or a 1,000 guys living and working in a space 200 feet by 60. Work the logistics any way you want. The Brits had been running harbor patrol forever, practicing their gunnery, coming about in slack wind, they were just better at the business at hand. Also, shooting at the waterline, rather than blowing away the rigging. Read more...

Service Restored

Sometime after six in the afternoon, the half-ring bleep, and the land-line was back. I didn't even read back over what I'd been writing. Overcast all day, with intermittent rain; but it's nice, in a somber way. In a lull, I walk out the driveway and spend an hour walking just a few hundred yards. Growth happening everywhere, quite astounding actually. I have to look at things, slice some of them open and taste them. And I always study the tracks. New mud, so there are a lot of tracks. Needed a fair amount of supplies, because of the late season snowstorm, so I went to town; some frost damage on the way, but it's still lovely. It was exciting to get out, especially as the phone had been dead, talk to Loren and Cory at the pub, eat a burger and have a milkshake on the way home, drive up the creek. D calls and we talk about early cameras for a while, then about vegetables. I'd stopped at B's on the way home, and he already has lettuce, radishes, and peas up out of the ground. The serious gardeners have all plowed and harrowed their patches. After all the years of gardening and farming I love watching other people's gardens grow. And I love going to the farmer's market, buying the fruit of other's labor. B and I talked about books for an hour, and I left piled high with London Reviews, a book on the battle of Trafalgar, and there was a New Yorker in the mailbox. I'd thoughtfully picked up a large slice of feta pizza at the Italian place, knowing I would sit down immediately and (as B says) 'high-grade' the articles I wanted to read first. So much new material that I can't scan it all at a first sitting, a week's reading, minimum, but I settled on a long piece about castrati, because I'd recently heard a recording of the last one, 1922, and I had been struck with the difference between a counter-tenor and a castrato. Also, Neil, when he was director of the National Book Awards, send me a lot of books, and one of them, I remember, was about the last of the castrati, who may have been the guy I heard, so I was interested. Gender politics, as a rule, don't interest me, I just don't care, if you present yourself as female, because of my English language, I would refer to you as she, or her. I have to heat some water to do some dishes, and it's warm enough to wash my hair and sponge off; so I decide to vacuum first, because I know I'll get dusty, while heating the water. Multi-tasking. Keep the thread. Which is difficult to do, or not, distracted by the natural world. The morels, for instance, I hope they view this as a threat, and pump out a good round of spores. I spread them, wherever I think they'd like to be. B and I talked about this, the way there could be several takes on any given incident. This book Nelson's Trafalgar is quite good. Technical and graphic detail. There were so many eye-witness reports that there's a chronological spreadsheet for the battle itself. Started about noon, when Nelson cut the enemy line, he gets shot about one-fifteen, the battle is over by two-thirty and mopped up by five. It's complex, but there are charts that locate space and time. It's quite exciting, as I suppose watching a sporting event or a movie might be, watching television, or shooting road-signs. I did vacuum for a while, but I came back to the book almost immediately, to immerse myself in the story. Sixty-one ships involved, the British badly out numbered, but Nelson's strategy, because of the wind, was brilliant. Several of the largest enemy ships just could not beat back into battle after they were cut out of line. And the British had improved the actual firing of cannon, the timing, by using a spark, a flint spark, to ignite the priming. With the rolling waves timing is critical, and the British were better gunners. I love this stuff. On ships of war, the gun-decks were painted red. Read more...

Off Kilter

Coming down with something. Felt it in my throat last night, then running nose and general miasma today. Didn't feel like doing anything except to try and prevent dripping on a book. Don't have a clue where I picked this up. I drink chicken broth all day and don't want to eat anything. Thank god no one called or came by. Holed up on the sofa, wrapped in a blanket, and read the latest New Yorker cover to cover, all the music reviews, the film reviews, the book reviews, the articles. Eventually I did eat a couple of scrambled eggs, with plain toast. Spring fly season. I don't know where they come from. I don't know enough about flies. What I do know, and it's why I love this life, is that there's a Fly Person out there, with a bevy of graduate students, studying flies. All I have to do is tap into the fly network. I get other people to do this for me, because I don't have a direct link, and it works pretty well most of the time. I had to laugh, 'pretty well most of the time' isn't a top recommendation. Still, TR found, within five minutes, the very edition of Thoreau's journals I wanted, unabridged, in two volumes, at 40 bucks each. Winslow had these books, on a shelf in Orleans. We actually tracked down specific quotes, drinking beer and smoking pot. I was winter house-sitting for his father, a house built for some magazine to photograph, a beautiful place, but extremely uncomfortable to live in, right on the water, a dock and a boat. Lean times, but dinner was always just a few hundred feet away; mussels, oysters, scallops, cod-fish cakes, and a couple of lobster pots out in the inlet. I paid the electric bill, and bought gas for the stove and heater. I can't remember exactly, what year this was, maybe 1969, when I first realized that seared fresh scallops on home-made egg noodles was better than tinned beef stew. Since then I've become a pretty good cook, mostly because I like to eat. I'll have to sign off again, thunder storms moving through, but not for a while I think. A footer, with sauce mustard and cheese, onion rings, and a vanilla shake, at the Buckeye Diary Barn. I nearly lost it at the Quick Stop (getting gas) where a fat lady was abusing a kid. I wanted to intervene, but I didn't know what to say or do. Fortunately another person, a teenage girl, got them apart and bought the kid a piece of candy. I couldn't wait to get home. New library books, rain on the roof, a clear path to redemption, I'm pretty much set. Remembered to get an extra pound of butter, for the morels, a country loaf they make at the bakery in town, a steak, whiskey, extra bag of tobacco and papers. Went to bed early, big booming thunder and rain, then got up when things quieted down, still had power, three in the morning, so I read for a while, then wrote, catching up. I'm sick so seldom that's it takes me a while to realize I'm not working on all cylinders. Coughing and sneezing, nose leaking like a faucet. Snow tonight and tomorrow morning they're saying, so I'll just retreat back into quasi-hibernation. Brought in an armload of wood, split a little very dry kindling. Thinking about tease and teasel took up most of my day. Those incredibly strong thorns can actually 'tease' out the fibers from raw wool. Once you've done that, a primitive loom isn't far behind and you're making cloth. Tartans even. Dyeing fibers must have been fairly early. There's evidence going back thousands of years. Realizing I might not get out for a few days I wash some underwear and socks. I put an extra five-gallon bucket on the back porch, let it half-fill with rain water and use a butter churn dasher to agitate, then dump the water and do it again, then a third time for the final rinse. I've stretched a clothes-line upstairs, in the girl's old bedroom. Domesticity. The phone has died. It gave out that little pathetic bleep land-lines give when they've been disconnected. Way too messy to even go outside, one trip to the woodshed tracks in more crap than the average house sees in a month: chainsaw debris, mixed with mud and crushed bits of leaves. It's best to let this stuff dry, before cleaning up. Just going out to the woodshed is exhausting, not eating enough and leaking fluids, so I come inside and drink some chicken broth, scramble a couple of eggs. The patter of rain reminds me of base military housing, which was often metal Quonset huts, about how loud they were, and how I learned to retreat into books. Dad was stationed in California and I was five, if I remember correctly, just starting school. A wonderful and beautiful black teacher, Mrs. Moon, and she recognized my connection with books, had me reading way over my head before I was out of first grade. One thing about being a military brat, was that you could reinvent yourself, or refine what you thought that you was becoming. I'm hazy on dates, but maybe 1959, Dad was stationed in Key West, the greatest tour of duty ever, as far as I was concerned, all I did was swim. I wore a swimsuit as underwear. I'd swim until I had to come home for dinner. There was no childcare to pay for, so Mom had a job too, and the family was climbing into the lower middle class; we were living off-base, and there were interesting people, there was a huge Naval base. Wave of storms, have to go. A fucking rain of hail, pea-sized, but the sound is like your drummer having a seizure. While I was shut down, I was thinking about Key West, it was such a cool place to be, the food (conch chowder, blue crabs, endless cobia and snapper fillets) and the endless supply of Key Lime Pies because we had trees in the back yard that supplied all our needs, lime-aid sweetened with Grenadine, and those pies. Mom would butter a pie pan, then crush graham crackers between sheets of waxed paper, mold them into the pan and toast it for a couple of minutes in a hot oven, add the custard, cook it for twenty minutes. I still consider this one of the great creations. What's not to love? The perfect marriage of egg, cream, and fruit. A tasting menu at Noma is $450, which seems a little steep, but cloud berries are hard to find, and they make a clear broth from barnacles that is very good. Donax (I think that's correct) was a similar soup in St. Augustine, that's made from those small shellfish that became the concrete of Florida. Concrete is one of those alchemical things, like gunpowder, you mix a few things together and you end up with something else. I go off to reference the word 'amalgam' and very quickly I'm side-tracked by 'algorithm'. Gardy Loo, as the Edinburgh ladies yelled, when they tossed the slops out the window. One assumes that the Glascow ladies said nothing, holding tight to the belief that if you don't mention something, it doesn't exist. The Ostrich Complex. It's difficult to avoid the political scene. Can Republicans actually endorse a Trump ticket? Is the fall-back ticket actually Ted Cruz, who is an idiot? Little or no snow accumulation, the ground is too warm.

-----------------------------------------------------

Phone is still out. It bleeped once this morning, like a wake-up call, but no dial-tone. Cold enough for snow but it's holding off, now they're calling for 'thunder snow showers' tonight and tomorrow. Clouds moving in, so I get out for a walk before the weather arrives. Several red-headed woodpeckers flash through the underbrush, they always seem to fly close to the ground, then swoop up onto the trunk of a tree. A flash of color. It's startling. I'm feeling fairly awful, but my nose has slowed down. I've sneezed more in two days than in the last two years and this seems like the worst of it, two more days, and then a couple of days to recover. Having a serious cold (or whatever) is exhausting. The phone is still out at five on a Friday, so I'm probably of luck until Monday soonest. I'll need to go down, with the phone number, and have B call it in the next time he teaches, though I'm sure they know, everything is monitored now, even the monitoring is monitored. I decided to buy the Thoreau journals, 80 bucks and I won't have to go the library next winter. I probably have everything I'll need to put them into library hard-bindings. To keep my hand in I rebind the occasional Dover Reprint into hard covers. Part of me is appalled to pay 80 bucks for two paperback books, though I did pay 40 bucks for the fourth book, in paper, of Levi-Strauss's great books on table manners. As I've mentioned before, the last chapter of the fourth book, the summation, the closing argument, is a brilliant piece of writing, and I got it off the shelf in case it snows tomorrow. No phone before Monday and I'm writing a novella. Nothing to be done. I needed to sleep, got a fire ready for the morning, a last wee dram, brain dead, slept until dawn; leaden light on two inches of new snow. Surprised it stuck, but there it is. Flurries, but the temps get a little above freezing, though it's supposed to get quite cold tonight. I forgot and left two buckets outdoors, now frozen cold-sinks in the back hallway. An armload of wood which I had thought might not be necessary. It's a mess outside. Holed up with a mug of tea, reading a Thomas Perry novel, a dead phone and an impassable driveway. On the bright side, it's very quiet. I listen to a couple of radio shows on Saturday and Sunday, and the time passes, which gets me thinking about time. With my new unlimited-calling phone plan, if I had a working phone, I would have called someone, to bitch and moan about the weather. A little rain, some broken sun, and most of the snow disappearing into ground fog. No wildlife, no birdsong, no sign that anything is alive. Some snow releases off the roof and smashes down on the back deck, it's loud and shakes the house, but I was actually expecting it, the conditions were exactly correct, so I knew, when I heard the snow starting to slide, what was coming. One, Mississippi, then a concussive event, very like an earthquake. Heavy wet snow slamming down from sixteen feet. I'm careful going in this way, because I know the icicles and snow want to fall; often, when I'm inside, I slam the door and all hell breaks lose. A game I play. `Weak as a kitten, but I feel better; I have to stick with light fiction as my brain still isn't functioning at normal speed, and I don't feel like doing anything, but I am better. Can't believe I'm back in fingerless gloves, bathrobe over clothes, Linda's hat pulled down over my ears, but I got into a writing rhythm and let the fire go out. The house was cold and I had to start heating all over again. Bad timing, but not a big deal, it takes an hour to stoke the stove and get it damped down. The comforting sound of cast iron heating. Within and without the world. I hear a snort and there's a big buck outside my window, handsome animal, horn buds just breaking through. It's the largest deer I've seen in a while, and in good shape for this time of year, now that the honeysuckle is thick in the hollows. If it doesn't snow again, I need a trip to town, for plain yogurt and fresh fruit, to get my stomach settled. And ingredients for a large pot of something, stew, or chili, or beans. Because the oven was hot, I made a pone of cornbread, in the next larger skillet, so it would be thinner and crisp; with butter and molasses it was very good. A discovery this winter was that most canned greens are not that bad, a little garlic and onion, some pork fat, they make a nice side dish with beans and cornbread. I had to laugh, clearly I need a better grill, larger, something that doesn't involve taking out the grate to add fuel. There's one grill, Chinese, that isn't expensive and offers promise, cast iron grate, accessible firebox, shaped so that things could be cooked off the heat, it even has a little stovepipe on the opposite end from where you have the fire, a nice cross draft. I was recently inducted into the Baby-Back Rib Hall Of Fame. We have a secret handshake. There are napkins involved. It's nice to be acknowledged, but I don't put any store by it. I do want to cook ribs soon, and I started a list of things I needed, or needed to do, to get ready for the rib season. The rub, of course, and I have some new things to add, California saffron, a Greek bitter pepper, and I spent an hour grinding four varieties of dried peppers from Arizona. A supremely aromatic event. The sauce must be refreshed. I have a quart jar of the mother, she's ten years old now, and I'll spark it up with various juices and wine, bock beer and whatever else is handy, but the real kick, for the sauce, is the liquid from cooking the ribs. The hybrid method I use to cook them allows me to collect all the liquid. Composed of pork juice, pork fat, and the rub. The fat congeals and you can just throw it away (I've never actually thrown any of this away, I cook potatoes in it) except for enough to seal the new jar of sauce. It's a great system. Side dishes are a matter of choice, baked beans, mac and cheese, certainly slaw, maybe a potato. Bread, to clean the plate. I lean toward a Cuban or French loaf, that has a crust, so you can apply finger-pressure for those last few swipes. My phone has been out for nearly a week, which is a pain in the ass, my friends think I'm dead, and the funny thing is I have to go off of the ridge, to phone the phone company, to tell them my phone isn't working, and try and figure out what's going on. I'm sure it's those tree guys with the contract to clear the easement down at the lake, they don't seem to know what they're doing. I run into this a lot anymore, people not knowing what they're doing. Dial-tone bleep. I'd better send. Read more...

Freeze Warning

Not just a frost warning, but a freeze warning, 25 degrees, but the river and the various bodies of water and the ground are so much warmer at this point that I can't imagine very much happening. Some frost on the roads. The verges, through the forest, had already turned a lovely emerald green, and the patches of honeysuckle have grown huge and thick. I stopped to look at a couple of walnut trees and they weren't even thinking about budding. The Redbud though is so beautiful I have to pay attention to my driving, lest I run off the road. Hunting morels for a good while today, it's a great way to study the ground; picked my first two, and sign of many more, though the cold will probably set them back. Not even enough for an omelet, but I slit them open and stuffed them with goat cheese and ran them through the toaster-oven as a kind of motivational technique. More rain, so I stayed inside and read the latest Ian Rankin novel. I did harvest enough water for personal ablutions, clean a bucket, and bring in an armload of wood. I had several words to look up, and I had been thinking about transgender popes, under the theory that if you took a large enough sampling (there have been a lot of popes) you could get any result you desired. I wonder about wearing robes, long skirts, and funny hats. I never was one for dress-up. Usually I was covered in fish-slime and crab juice and had to hose off before I could take a shower, or had been spending time with the hogs, and I'd been told to not come to the party. I eat papaya, or an odd citrus, sometimes, I just make a pone of cornbread. Read more...

Cross Wind

Quick trip to town, chance of snow, so I thought I'd better get back-up whiskey and tobacco. A especially lovely trip as the Redbuds are blooming. Library and Kroger, stopped at the museum to see the new exhibit, huge watercolors, too big, actually, to hang in a house. A pre-show, as the pieces weren't hanging, but were unwrapped and leaning against the wall. Colorful, with areas of interest. The drive home was a two knuckle affair, very gusty wind, stopped at B's to take back a book, had a beer and talked about Bolano and modern fiction; it started pattering rain and I went home. A gust of wind, when I topped the ridge, threatened to push me back down. Certainly blowing over 40 mph. Getting colder, B already had a fire going, April, after all. I have a fire going within minutes, a butter wrapper and some cash register receipts, a few small oak splits. The warming shelf, above the cookstove, is the perfect place to dry kindling. With the downdraft from the wind, it's often difficult to start a fire, but I find that heating the stovepipe solves the problem. There's an algorithm, I'm sure. What the world throws back at you is not pin-point accuracy, it's all very sloppy. This paragraph, for instance, I've started three times. Now, three in the morning, the power came back on, lights, refrigerator, the radio squeaked, and the world was suddenly a different place. Connected is a relative term, you might feel (or I might feel) some connection, but the truth is that we don't actually know. All this shit goes on, the natural world, the societal world, raising kids, earning a living.

Peas poking through and
almost enough greens to make
a salad, more snow.

Later, watching moonbeams,
remembering white flowers
blowing down the road.

All I do is read and write, take some walks to leaven the loaf, reflect on a squashed bottle-cap, monitor various things. Parting the ducks with a wave of your paddle is a perfect end to the day. Duck-breast hash and sex in the glooming. The hubris of the present. Meanwhile the Sassafras buds are swelling and they're quite spicy. I skinned a couple, and sliced them, with a splash of wine vinegar, and think they'd be good in a bitter salad. Found a very nice batch of dandelion on Route 52 along the river. Not sprayed, young and tender, but I didn't have any left because I'd wilted the whole batch in pork fat and eaten them from the skillet. Try this. A clove or two of garlic, a finely minced shallot, in a tablespoon of rendered crackling fat, add a large bunch of greens, add the cracklings. I like this with plain rice and soy sauce. The power was out for hours, then woke me up when it came back on, lights and the fridge, after dark. I didn't know if it was morning or night, and I didn't care; clearly a case for the full breakfast, potatoes, link sausage, a cheese omelet, and toast with marmalade. I serve this, as required, any hour of the day or night. The wind was blowing so hard last night that the house was shuddering. I know I'm over-built by a factor of four, but even grand clippers went down; it was so very dark and the only sound was a roaring through the trees. I have to boot-up to find out what time it is, so I take the time to be sure I saved everything, then started reading and making minor changes on what I'd been writing. This is how it goes, I get a wee dram, roll a smoke, and look for the thread. I remember something and realize I did lose a couple of lines, which isn't bad, actually, because it makes rethink a thought train. B was talking about a place he had lived, in the Pacific Northwest, where they had to canoe to the cabin. See my piece in Over The Edge, Access And Attachment. Listening to some Reverend Gary Davis, considering TR's call that we get down to brass tacks and conspire on at least an oratorio. That weeping willow and that morning dove, I sure do love. There's a bit of stride piano in Gary Davis; listen, when he's not singing. The preacher picked the guitar, waiting for the lord. The laird. Read more...

The Flock

Goddamn turkeys. If they get into the mushrooms, like last year, I'll kill one of them. They were behind the shed today, where I always get my first morels. I'd already checked the area this morning, so I just watched them for a while. I do love seeing them so close, so stately and handsome, and so busy. I finally go out and run them off with a firecracker, hoping to keep them away for a few days. This flock roosts over beyond the graveyard, I can hear them in the morning. I'll shoot a young one, a yearling, cook it in the smoker, and serve it as an open-face sandwich with mashed potatoes and gravy. I'll skin it, instead of plucking it, because it's so much easier, then lard it with bacon. Even a small bird will dress out at four to six pounds, so I'll end up making a pate, with leftovers and mushrooms; a different season I'd just make a soup, but I like cold food when the weather gets warm. Reading and grazing can be high art, and I enjoy eating with my fingers. There's a thicket of honeysuckle down the slope from the house, and the resident doe, with two yearlings are feeding in a frenzy on the young leaves. I was half-listening to Science Friday on the radio, and that meant listening to the news and weather on the hour, so I heard Trump pontificate about punishing women for having abortions. I got so mad I had to go throw rocks, which didn't help the situation, but did make me feel better. Who, the fuck, does he think he is? He falls into that set of mostly white, mostly male jackasses that should be forced to clean hog pens. I have to take a walk to calm down, sacrifice an old sweatshirt to the Green-Briar God, and listen to running water. Flushed another woodcock, which is something that never fails to get my attention, and I was fine when I got back to the house, jolted back into the natural world. I'm struck almost dumb, making a cup of tea, boiling water on a hot plate, sitting at the island, rolling a smoke, thinking that there are two worlds, at least, the inside and the outside. The natural and other. They're so distinct. You wake up in a bed, eat breakfast, listen to the news, get in a car, go somewhere, do something; or you dig roots and feed crows. There's some overlap, the food-store, the pub, the laundromat, but they're very different worlds. I don't even defend my position: I don't care and it doesn't matter. The fact that I just went back and added a semi-colon, a semi-colon for god's sake, struck me as funny. Semi-colons are like adverbs: you shouldn't use them very often. That whole cry wolf thing. My position is that I don't have to take a position, because I've separated myself from anywhere it was necessary to take a position. I'm a student of oak-galls, I don't give a shit about the rest of it. The good news is that I'm not a threat to society.

Tom

That deaf, dumb, blind kid, sure plays a mean pinball. I'd type out a prime number, and he would immediately give the next prime, which seemed to go on forever. Read more...